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User's Guide to This Website:
What's In It
& How To Use It
This
website is designed to be simple and easy to
navigate and use. Please let me
know if you find any part difficult or
counter-intuitive, or if you find any broken
links, errors, or anything else that needs
fixing.
The
masthead (top part) of every page contains 28
links, as follows:
A. DOCUMENT
COLLECTIONS: 10 LINKS.
In the far right-hand column are ten links to
ten different document collections ("-DOCS").
Each DOCS collection is organized
chronologically. These ten collections of
documents, and the ten Thematic Collections, constitute the heart of the website.
The DOCS and Thematic Collections are like 20 big file
cabinets, each devoted to a separate type of
document (DOCS) or Topic / Theme, as described more fully below.
B.
THEMATIC COLLECTIONS:
10 LINKS.
In the left-hand column
(to the left of the -DOCS collections) are ten
links to thematic document collections (from
"Air War" to "Top 100"). Some of this material
overlaps with the DOCS material, and some does
not. For instance, the Thematic Collection
"EAST COAST" contains some EDSN-Docs, PC-Docs,
M-Docs, News-Docs, and others. So it does
overlap with the DOCS collection to a degree.
But there is also a lot of material housed in
the EAST COAST pages that appears nowhere else.
The same is true of most of the Thematic
Collections. Readers will need to explore,
experiment, and figure it out for themselves. The internal Google search
engine proves very useful for seaching specific
individuals, places, events, words, and phrases, as described below.
NOTA BENE:
In order to read all the documents relating to
any given period or date (say, August 1928), one
needs to consult all ten DOCS collections and
all ten Thematic collections.
C. ADMINISTRATIVE (OR OTHER):
7 LINKS.
The horizontal navigation
bar at the bottom of the masthead contains links
that might be described as "administrative," or
"other" – like this User's Guide – that runs
from "Bib & Lit" to "Book / Libro".
D. HOMEPAGE:
1 LINK.
The masthead also includes a link to the
website's homepage.
E. INTERNAL GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE.
A very handy tool that lets you search the
entire website.
That makes
28 links on the masthead of every page, plus an
internal Google search engine.
Before
looking at these collections and links in
greater detail, let me summarize the citation
conventions and abbreviations used here.
CITATION
CONVENTIONS & ABBREVIATIONS
Each
individual document on this website can be
identified by a unique alphanumeric code that
follows a simple convention: [DOCUMENT
TYPE][YEAR.MONTH.DAY].
For
example, PC28.05.17 means "Patrol and Combat
Report, 17 May 1928." M29.11.30 means "Miscellaneous Intelligence Report, 30 November
1929." In other words, simply take the "Docs" off the document type, put it in front of
the date, and you've identified the document.
When there are two or more documents of the same
type with the same date, the documents are
distinguished with lowercase letters tagged on
at the end (for example, PC28.05.17a,
PC28.05.17b, etc.). The PHOTO-DOCS page
follow a slightly different convention, as is
apparent on those pages.
Altogether
around two-thirds of this material comes from
the Records of the United States Marine Corps,
housed mainly in the US National Archives
(Record Group 127, or RG127), comprising about
150 linear feet of files. The citation
convention for this material is as follows:
[US National Archives & Records
Administration, Record Group Number] / [Entry
Number] / [Box Number] / [File Number, if
applicable].
Therefore:
a document whose source is cited as
RG127/206/12 refers to the US
National Archives, Record Group 127, Entry 206,
Box 12. The same with
RG127/43A/10: Entry 43A, Box 10. In
some cases the RG127 is dropped and assumed:
it is the default repository.
Other abbreviations
used throughout this website include:
AB
— Alejandro Bendaña,
La mística de Sandino (1994)
ANN
— Archivos Nacionales de Nicaragua,
Managua (Nicaraguan National Archives)
ASG
— Anastasio Somoza García's book,
El verdadero Sandino (1936)
HNMC
— Hemeroteca Nacional
Manolo Cuadra, Managua (National newspaper
repository)
GCSN
— General Correspondence of the
Secretary of the Navy, 1925-40, RG 80, US
National Archives
GN / GNN
— Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua
(Nicaraguan National Guard)
LOC
— Library of Congress, Washington
D.C.
MCRC
— Marine Corps
Research Center, Quantico VA
NYT
— The New York
Times
PV1 & PV2
— Sandino's collected writings, in
Sergio Ramírez, ed., Augusto C. Sandino, el
pensamiento vivo, 2 vols., Managua, 1984
REC
— Robert E. Conrad's book,
Sandino: Testimony of a Nicaraguan Patriot,
Princeton Univ. Press, 1990
RG
— "Record Group" in the US National
Archives, Washington DC
SELSER1 & 2
— Gregorio Selser, Sandino,
general de hombres libres, 2 vols., Bue-nos
Aires, 1958
USDS
— United States Department of State.
Usually cited using their decimal file system:
e.g., USDS 817.00/6634; for a full list of
relevant State Dept records, see USDS-DOCS
USMC
— United States Marine Corps
USNA1 & USNA2
— The first (USNA1) is the United
States National Archives in downtown Washington
D.C. (where the original Constitution &
Declaration of Independence are, a magnificent
old building). The second (USNA2) refers
to the overflow Archives building built back in the 1990s —
Archives II in College Park, MD.
WCS
— Walter C. Sandino, El libro de Sandino: El
Bandolerismo de Sandino en Nicaragua
(Managua: INPASA, 2009), and the personal
collection of Sr. Sandino, who has generously
shared his materials with me.
With
these conventions and abbreviations in mind,
let us look at each of these 28 links in a
little more detail, starting with the
core of
the website: the DOCUMENT ("DOCS")
collections.
A.
DOCUMENT ("DOCS")
COLLECTIONS
1.
EDSN-DOCS
"EDSN" stands for Ejército
Defensor de la Soberanía Nacional de Nicaragua,
or Defending Army of Nicaraguan National
Sovereignty — the official name of Sandino's
politico-military organization. At present
these pages list every known extant document
produced by (or sent to, or seized from) members
of the EDSN — around 1,340 individual documents
at last count. This includes everything
already published elsewhere, as well as more
than 900 hitherto unpublished documents —
letters, orders, diaries, warnings, prayers,
poems, songs, sketches, lists — most seized from
dead or captured rebels or camps. Right
now about 268 are published here for the first
time. This extraordinary cache of material
(comprising around 2,000 pages) is probably the
most historically significant collection of
documents on this website.
2. IES-DOCS
"IES" stands for Instituto de
Estudio del Sandinismo, or Institute of
Sandino-ism Studies. This collection
includes 82 oral testimonies of elderly
Sandinistas, most produced in the early 1980s by
the IES (a branch of the Sandinista Ministry of
Culture based in Managua) as part of a
state-sponsored memory project. An
extraordinary collection, fraught with
interpretive issues, and probably the single
most important primary source on the Sandino
rebellion produced since the 1930s (around 1,000
pages of original documents).
3. IR-DOCS
"IR" stands for "Intelligence
Reports" — in this case, serial intelligence
reports that followed a standardized format and
were produced in the capitals of the military "Areas" that the Marines & Guardia devised early
in the war: the Northern Area (most of Las
Segovias with its capital at Ocotal), the
Central Area (the Jinotega highlands, with its
capital at the city of Jinotega), the Eastern
Area (the Atlantic or East Coast region, with
its capital at Bluefields), and the Southern
Area (most of the rest of Western Nicaragua,
with its capital in Managua). These serial
intelligence reports were produced on a weekly,
biweekly, or monthly basis and distributed to
intelligence officers across Nicaragua —
variously designated the Bn-2, B-2, R-2, and
GN-2 Intelligence Reports (around 1,600 pages).
4. M-DOCS
"M" stands for "Miscellaneous" and is a catch-all category for
Marine-Guardia reports of various kinds that
don't readily fall into any other category.
Into the "M-DOCS" category I've slotted
everything having to do with intelligence that
is not from air patrols, not from ground
patrols, and not from serial intelligence
reports, the State Department, or elsewhere.
There is an enormous quantity of valuable
information here (about 2,000 pages of original
documents and could grow by thousands). At
present the collection houses 54 propaganda
fliers of the EDSN, the Marines & Guardia, and
the two main political parties, and a handful of
other items linked from the comprehensive list
on the M-Docs homepage.
5. NEWS-DOCS
"NEWS" stands for "Newspapers" and is short-hand for various types
of journalistic accounts on this topic — mainly
Nicaraguan and US newspapers, but also some
Honduran, Mexican, Costa Rican, Argentine,
Peruvian, Spanish, German, and others, as well
as magazine articles and other types of
publications intended for mass circulation (over
1,200 digital images & will grow by hundreds &
perhaps thousands).
6.
PC-DOCS
"PC" stands for "Patrol &
Combat Reports." These 1,250 or so reports
tell an extraordinary story of the quotidian,
spontaneous interactions of Segovianos and
Marines, and paint an exceptionally fine-grained
portrait of the messiness, confusion, and
complexity of the guerrilla war, social
revolution, and regional civil war that was the
Sandino Rebellion. There is some
astonishing information here (over 2,400 pages
at last count). Right now the first 125
patrol & combat reports are published here,
taking events to June 1928.
7. PHOTO-DOCS
"PHOTO" stands for "Photographs" and is shorthand for all kinds of
visual images — not only photographs but
maps, posters, engravings, sketches, and
others, from a wide variety of sources:
the US National Archives, the Marine Corps
Research Center, the Library of Congress, the
Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y
Centroamérica in Managua, newspapers &
magazines, and private collections.
Currently houses over 400 visual images, and
will eventually house more than 2,000.
8. RAC-DOCS
"RAC" stands for "Rockefeller
Archive Center" in Sleepy Hollow, NY, the
repository for the records of the Rockefeller
Foundation, the New York-based philanthropic
organization that carried out a series of public
health campaigns in Nicaragua from the mid-1910s
through the 1930s. I extend my gratitude
to the Rockefeller Archive Center for its
generous Grant-in-Aid that allowed me to work in
its archives in January 2006, when I learned a
great deal about the Foundation's public health
initiatives in Nicaragua and about social and
public health conditions in various parts of the
country, including Las Segovias. The
Rockefeller Archive Center's "Rules Governing
the Use of Manuscripts" stipulate that only the
Archive Center can authorize the publication of
materials from its archives. I am
currently soliciting the RAC’s permission to
publish selected documents. There is some
fascinating information here, about 500 pages.
9. USDS-DOCS
"USDS" stands for "United
States Department of State," which is another
catch-all category that includes a dazzling
variety of materials — not only consular
reports, but letters from Nicaraguans, newspaper
clippings, photographs, and all kinds of other
items. At least 3,000 pages of original
documents.
10. USMC-DOCS
"USMC" stands for "United
States Marine Corps". The USMC-Docs
Homepage will offer links to a wide variety of
material having to do with the Marines —
including materials from the Marine Corps
Research Center (MCRC) in Quantico VA, the
Library of Congress, and other repositories.
At present the collection houses seven oral
histories of US Marines who served in Nicaragua,
and the "Official List of Marine Corps
Casualties in Nicaragua, 1927-1934." In
time these pages will house over 1,000 pages
unpublished primary documents.
B.
THEMATIC COLLECTIONS
11.
AIR WAR
A smaller collection on this
specific aspect of the war; mostly completed, as
a documentary annex to my article, "Social
Memory and Tactical Doctrine" (International
History Review, Sept. 2007; published in
Spanish in Temas Nicas in September
2012, No. 53, under the title, "Los Malditos
Pájaros de Hierro: La Guerra Aérea en Nicaragua
durante la Rebelión de Sandino, 1927-1932," pp.
47-87). The collection houses about 150
documents.
12.
CONTACTS
"Contacts" is Marine
Corps-speak for military engagements, or
battles. More specifically, a "contact"
refers to an armed encounter between two
opposing hostile ground forces in which shots
were fired by both sides. A "contact"
could thus last from several seconds to several
hours. The category thus excludes the
hundreds of cases in which the Marines & Guardia
shot at people running away from them, shot
prisoners "attempting to escape," etc.; it also
excludes "air war contacts" — i.e., military
encounters between air and ground forces; these
are included under "Air War". The "Official List of Contacts" (produced by the
Marines & Guardia at the end of the war) lists
510 such contacts. My own list approaches
740. These pages will map out in time & space as
many of these 740 military encounters as
possible, along with statistical data derived
from the original combat & patrol reports.
13.
EAST COAST
"East Coast" is shorthand for
the Atlantic Coast region of Nicaragua, which
had (and has) a history and culture very
different than the rest of Western or
Spanish-speaking Nicaragua. The Sandino
rebellion found its organic social base in the
mountains of Las Segovias, the north-central
region of Spanish-speaking Western Nicaragua
bordering Honduras. But a significant
amount of rebel activity and Marine-Guardia
actions took place in the Atlantic Coast region.
These pages have been built and currently house
over 1,000 documents and more than 2,300 JPEG
document images in 53 webpages; around half of
these documents are transcribed and fully
searchable.
14.
EDSN
"EDSN" (as we've seen) stands
for Ejército Defensor de la Soberanía Nacional
de Nicaragua, or Defending Army of Nicaraguan
National Sovereignty. This is the homepage
for a sprawling collection of documentary
references to Sandinista activities, jefes
(chieftains), internal squabbles, motivating
ideology, and related topics having to do with
the EDSN. At present the principal pages
and navigation structure have been built, but
the pages remain mostly empty of content.
15.
GANGS
"Gangs" is shorthand for the
non-Sandinista, non-Guardia, non-Marine
violence-producing groups that abounded in Las
Segovias in the wake of the 1926-27 Civil War —
outlaws, bandits, and especially political
gangs acting in the service of powerful
political patrons. "Gangs" is thus
shorthand for local-regional caudillismo and the
political culture of violence-making. This
specialized collection focuses in particular on
the gruesome actions of Chamorrista gang leader
Anastasio Hernández and his Conservative patrons
in Ocotal. It also examines cases in and
around La Trinidad, Estelí, Sébaco, El Jicaral,
and other places. Sources include
newspaper accounts, State Department records,
affidavits of surviving victims, and other
documents dealing with the topic, but based
mostly on RG127. At present the collection
includes 26 Marine-Guardia documents and 26
newspaper stories; in time these pages will
house 200 or so pages of primary documents.
16.
GUARDIA
"Guardia" is shorthand for "Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua," the ostensibly
"non-partisan constabulary" created in the May
4, 1927 Espino Negro Accord (or Treaty of
Tipitapa) that ended the Civil War or
Constitutionalist War of 1926-27. These
pages currently house a wide range of material
comprising nearly 3,000 pages of text, and are
envisioned as a repository for all kinds of
information relating to the GNN.
17.
HONDURAS
"Honduras" is shorthand for
not only Honduras but the borderlands region of
Western Honduras and the Nicaraguan Segovias —
basically the borderlands zone stretching from
Somotillo in the southwest to Cifuentes and
Jalapa in the northeast. These pages are
envisioned as a repository for all kinds of
reports and documents relating to Honduran and
borderlands society, culture, politics, and
history.
18.
NATURE
"Nature" is shorthand for all
kinds of evidence relating to the natural
environment of Las Segovias: descriptions
of its many types of ecosystems and sub-regions
— natural resources and features of all types,
including plant, animal, and insect life —
geology, mountain ranges, rivers, valleys, soil
types — seasons and patterns of rainfall and
drought — and the mutually constituitive relationship between
human beings and the natural environment over
time.
19.
PEDRÓN
"Pedrón" is shorthand for
(and the nom de guerre of) EDSN General Pedro
Altamirano — a fascinating figure who definitely
merits his own set of pages. Pedrón was
unique: God-fearing, utterly ruthless, and
one of the canniest, shrewdest, and successful
of rebel chieftains in all of Latin American
history. The Marines & Guardia considered him
the most dangerous of all jefes after Sandino.
He was also the only rebel chieftain to remain
in rebellion after Sandino's assassination in
February 1934. Remarkably, he and a
handful of followers held out until 1937, when
he was betrayed and killed. These pages are devoted to
puzzling out who he was, what he did, and how
his legacy reverberated across space and time.
20.
TOP 100
"Top 100" is shorthand for
the cream of the intelligence-crop on the
Sandinista rebels: what struck
me as among the most illuminating documents,
produced by non-Sandinistas, that offer insight
into the rebels' beliefs, moral codes, values,
and practices, and the cultural, social, and
political landscape of Las Segovias, Nicaragua,
and Central America out of which this rebellion
emerged and grew. These Top 100 were culled from
the records of the US Marines and Nicaraguan
National Guard (RG127), but also from the
Nicaraguan National Archives, newspapers, State
Department reports, and elsewhere. The
collection currently houses nearly 800 documents
– especially notable are the collections at the
very end of the Top 100 pages: sprawling
collections comprising hundreds of documents.
C.
ADMINISTRATIVE (OR
"OTHER") LINKS
21.
BIB & LIT
"Bibliography & Literature"
on the Sandino rebellion, and more broadly on
the golden age of US imperialism in the
circum-Caribbean. Envisioned as a
comprehensive list of all substantial published
& unpublished works on the topic, with many
(soon) available via PDF files and external
links.
22.
CURRICULA
K-12 and college-level
curricular guides for teachers and professors
who want to use the materials on this website
but would like a little help on what to use and
interpreting what they see.
23.
READERS' FORUM
A space for questions,
comments, insights, reflections, observations,
interpretations, ruminations, informed
speculations, educated guesses & mediated open
dialogue among & between folks who have
something they want to say or ask about this
topic or website. Right now I’m way behind
on copying & pasting into the Readers’ Forum and
aim to develop and maintain an interactive blog.
24.
SITE MAP
Every self-respecting website
has a site map. When I learn how to build
one, it'll be here.
25.
USER'S GUIDE
You are here.
26.
CONTACT US
My contact information and
curriculum vitae, which includes links to my
published (and some unpublished) material on
this subject.
27.
BOOK /
LIBRO
Placeholder for a portal
connecting the printed book to the website and
future repository of the printed book's extended
footnotes. The portal will make possible a
genuinely hybrid or synthetic print-web text.
D.
HOMEPAGE LINK & INTERNAL
GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE
Pretty self-explanatory. A
great way to find stuff and find your way back
home. The Google search engine can serve as an
especially powerful tool. A search for "Turcios"
(as in Froylán Turcios), for example, yields 24
"hits" at present, each with a brief synopsis of
the document in which it appears. A search for "Pedron" yields 70 hits;
"Musawas" yields 19;
and so on. Remembering an unusual word, such as
"prevaricator," makes it possible to instantly
pinpoint the document it came from. Fully
searchable documents are only those legible to
Google’s "spiders" in PDF files, or those that
are fully transcribed, since the search engine
does not pick up words or images in JPEG files.
Hence the need for volunteers like Mr. Richard
Siu, Brandon Ray, and Linda Pudder to help
transcribe documents. Thank you Richard,
Brandon, and Linda!
And that, in a nutshell, is what's in this
website and how this material is organized.
Please contact me if you run into any broken
links or obvi-ous errors or something that needs
clarifying or anything else that's amiss.
Aproveche.
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